AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Void Psyker becomes good at Torrent.
I think there may've been a patch to make bad guys less trivial on Normal yesterday, as well. Still fairly simple to stay upright if you're rolling with a Force Psyker or Hacker, it looks like.
There's pretty much nothing written about Starcrawlers. Not much in the way of articles or discussions, not really any wiki, and completely empty on GameFAQs.
Finished Starcrawlers in 27 hours on Challenging. Great game and I loved almost all of it, though the difficulty curve isn't quite there - early game is easy, then it gets harder towards lvl 15-20 until you get all the good stuff from your skill trees and it gets very easy, and the enemies don't really get new tricks (or maybe they do but I just shut them down and they never get to use them). The grand finale against the end boss had several stages and looked way cool, but it never had a chance to attack before I killed it. This was a lvl 28 party against a lvl 30 boss, my hacker did most of the damage.
Only fight I lost during the whole thing was against the boss of the lvl 18 story mission, also died to a magma trap when I got frustrated trying to find an off switch and tried what happens if you just walk through it.
Despite the combat being too easy, the writing and exploring the locations was really fun and the interface works well. Was surprised to see how many split paths the main plot takes, I guess when you don't need voice acting or fancy cutscenes it's a lot easier to create a lot of content. I backed both this and Darkest Dungeon at the same time and while I think DD is more unique and impressive this was easier to enjoy, certainly far more relaxing experience. Might still dabble a bit with the game, only tried half the classes so far and there's NG+ and so on. Still, getting to a definite end of the main plot was nice and I liked the ending and getting to read what the impact of my decisions was.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Finished Starcrawlers in 27 hours on Challenging. Great game and I loved almost all of it, though the difficulty curve isn't quite there - early game is easy, then it gets harder towards lvl 15-20 until you get all the good stuff from your skill trees and it gets very easy, and the enemies don't really get new tricks (or maybe they do but I just shut them down and they never get to use them). The grand finale against the end boss had several stages and looked way cool, but it never had a chance to attack before I killed it. This was a lvl 28 party against a lvl 30 boss, my hacker did most of the damage.
Only fight I lost during the whole thing was against the boss of the lvl 18 story mission, also died to a magma trap when I got frustrated trying to find an off switch and tried what happens if you just walk through it.
Despite the combat being too easy, the writing and exploring the locations was really fun and the interface works well. Was surprised to see how many split paths the main plot takes, I guess when you don't need voice acting or fancy cutscenes it's a lot easier to create a lot of content. I backed both this and Darkest Dungeon at the same time and while I think DD is more unique and impressive this was easier to enjoy, certainly far more relaxing experience. Might still dabble a bit with the game, only tried half the classes so far and there's NG+ and so on. Still, getting to a definite end of the main plot was nice and I liked the ending and getting to read what the impact of my decisions was.
Ever since I got Voidstorm, Void Psyker has put out literally too much threat to tank for unless I treat this as an MMO and my Force Psyker deliberately builds a ton of threat before I go live on damage. Smuggler's only slightly behind on raw output but it's a lot slower to build and still relies mostly on the Shoot First procs for spikes.
I suspect I'm getting closer to the end of the story, but I gotta say I'm really enjoying this game.
Finished Starcrawlers in 27 hours on Challenging. Great game and I loved almost all of it, though the difficulty curve isn't quite there - early game is easy, then it gets harder towards lvl 15-20 until you get all the good stuff from your skill trees and it gets very easy, and the enemies don't really get new tricks (or maybe they do but I just shut them down and they never get to use them). The grand finale against the end boss had several stages and looked way cool, but it never had a chance to attack before I killed it. This was a lvl 28 party against a lvl 30 boss, my hacker did most of the damage.
Only fight I lost during the whole thing was against the boss of the lvl 18 story mission, also died to a magma trap when I got frustrated trying to find an off switch and tried what happens if you just walk through it.
Despite the combat being too easy, the writing and exploring the locations was really fun and the interface works well. Was surprised to see how many split paths the main plot takes, I guess when you don't need voice acting or fancy cutscenes it's a lot easier to create a lot of content. I backed both this and Darkest Dungeon at the same time and while I think DD is more unique and impressive this was easier to enjoy, certainly far more relaxing experience. Might still dabble a bit with the game, only tried half the classes so far and there's NG+ and so on. Still, getting to a definite end of the main plot was nice and I liked the ending and getting to read what the impact of my decisions was.
Ever since I got Voidstorm, Void Psyker has put out literally too much threat to tank for unless I treat this as an MMO and my Force Psyker deliberately builds a ton of threat before I go live on damage. Smuggler's only slightly behind on raw output but it's a lot slower to build and still relies mostly on the Shoot First procs for spikes.
I suspect I'm getting closer to the end of the story, but I gotta say I'm really enjoying this game.
Tanking seems far worse than using crowd control, my Smuggler took care of most enemies with the trap tree. Trap Card alone is enough to prevent most trash mobs on firing at you. With the bigger bosses I could have had my Soldier tank them with Juggernaut that doesn't care about threat but they died so fast that never was an issue. They've nerfed some of the more extreme Hacker things already but last I checked they haven't touched Void Psyker much. I read about some guy who never did any side missions and fought the NG+ lvl 60 end boss with lvl 38 heroes on the hardest difficulty or something like that, so there has definitely been some balance issues. Might not be doable any more but the game could still use a few balancing patches for sure.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Finished Starcrawlers in 27 hours on Challenging. Great game and I loved almost all of it, though the difficulty curve isn't quite there - early game is easy, then it gets harder towards lvl 15-20 until you get all the good stuff from your skill trees and it gets very easy, and the enemies don't really get new tricks (or maybe they do but I just shut them down and they never get to use them). The grand finale against the end boss had several stages and looked way cool, but it never had a chance to attack before I killed it. This was a lvl 28 party against a lvl 30 boss, my hacker did most of the damage.
Only fight I lost during the whole thing was against the boss of the lvl 18 story mission, also died to a magma trap when I got frustrated trying to find an off switch and tried what happens if you just walk through it.
Despite the combat being too easy, the writing and exploring the locations was really fun and the interface works well. Was surprised to see how many split paths the main plot takes, I guess when you don't need voice acting or fancy cutscenes it's a lot easier to create a lot of content. I backed both this and Darkest Dungeon at the same time and while I think DD is more unique and impressive this was easier to enjoy, certainly far more relaxing experience. Might still dabble a bit with the game, only tried half the classes so far and there's NG+ and so on. Still, getting to a definite end of the main plot was nice and I liked the ending and getting to read what the impact of my decisions was.
Ever since I got Voidstorm, Void Psyker has put out literally too much threat to tank for unless I treat this as an MMO and my Force Psyker deliberately builds a ton of threat before I go live on damage. Smuggler's only slightly behind on raw output but it's a lot slower to build and still relies mostly on the Shoot First procs for spikes.
I suspect I'm getting closer to the end of the story, but I gotta say I'm really enjoying this game.
Tanking seems far worse than using crowd control, my Smuggler took care of most enemies with the trap tree. Trap Card alone is enough to prevent most trash mobs on firing at you. With the bigger bosses I could have had my Soldier tank them with Juggernaut that doesn't care about threat but they died so fast that never was an issue. They've nerfed some of the more extreme Hacker things already but last I checked they haven't touched Void Psyker much. I read about some guy who never did any side missions and fought the NG+ lvl 60 end boss with lvl 38 heroes on the hardest difficulty or something like that, so there has definitely been some balance issues. Might not be doable any more but the game could still use a few balancing patches for sure.
Well, in this case when I say "Tanking," I really mean "not constantly getting targeted by every single thing after a Voidstorm or a high-energy Torrent." Void Psyker actually seemed to get buffed to not have its day entirely ruined by shields at the low end; I couldn't hit Bolts through shields and they didn't lower them any, and now they do.
Overloads + Purification Prism gets exciting if your team gets hit by any of the debuffs Voids can put out, damage-wise, as well.
I'm pretty sure the Smuggler's hide-behind-someone move currently does nothing at all, which is another knock on the tanking front. The entire plan was for her to hide behind my Engineer!
Been in a Wizardry Clone mood as of late. Keep leaning towards Elimage Gothic or Operation Abyss, or maybe going back and finishing Demon Gaze...
Wish Stranger of Sword City PC got the expansion, but Experience is staying mum about that -- apparently the PC version had a patch that was based on feedback from the JP players which makes it nontrivial to port the expansion stuff over to it. (And NISA might not want to if it didn't sell well.)
Apparently Elminage is getting fan translations of the games we didn't get. And surprise, E1 (Original) is coming out for the 3DS tomorrow.
Class of Heroes 3 is apparently done, but they took too long and the UMD factory in JP has shut down for good, so they can't do a physical. They're debating switching from PSP to PS3. Not only that, if I understand it right, the PSP store has been shut down, so digital won't work either.
...Kinda wish they had released this one already...
Other than that, Etrian Odyssey 5 is coming soonish, and they just announced Persona Q2.
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Yeah Starcrawlers has been my crawler of choice too. When I'm in a fantasy mood I find I've been firing up my GOG copy of Pool of Radiance lately. I've been enjoying all of the old artifacts of that eras limitations like the Adventurer's Journal and the Code Wheel. GOG did a great job bringing all of that along. And 2nd Ed AD&D is my jam. THAC0 for life. For an extra dose of comforting nostalgia I'll hit netflix and throw some Trek up on the other monitor.
I need to give Fall of the Dungeon Guardians a serious shot sometime.
Starcrawlers looks awesome and is gonna happen at some point. Pool of Radiance brings back some hella fond memories, but I have the suspicion trying to replay it would take the shine off those memories.
What is this I don't even.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I am stuck on what I believe is one of the last couple bosses of EO4 because I put it down for a while and no longer remember which flowers I need to pick for Amrita 2s. I'll fix that sooner or later.
You could buy Grimoire for $40, a game that's 20 years late and has no manual and includes designer tidbits like:
"A lack of understanding of the user interface and game mechanics has not prevented the majority of players from concluding they may be looking at one of the best computer roleplaying games ever written. The smartest ones intuit it, they don't need a press rep to give them a bag of promotional goodies for them to guess it."
You could buy Grimoire for $40, a game that's 20 years late and has no manual and includes designer tidbits like:
"A lack of understanding of the user interface and game mechanics has not prevented the majority of players from concluding they may be looking at one of the best computer roleplaying games ever written. The smartest ones intuit it, they don't need a press rep to give them a bag of promotional goodies for them to guess it."
I will probably pick that game up, yes. Because salty nerds turned gamedevs are the best gamedevs.
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
You could buy Grimoire for $40, a game that's 20 years late and has no manual and includes designer tidbits like:
"A lack of understanding of the user interface and game mechanics has not prevented the majority of players from concluding they may be looking at one of the best computer roleplaying games ever written. The smartest ones intuit it, they don't need a press rep to give them a bag of promotional goodies for them to guess it."
Excuse you, it's on a 10% off sale right now. So, it's only $36.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
You could buy Grimoire for $40, a game that's 20 years late and has no manual and includes designer tidbits like:
"A lack of understanding of the user interface and game mechanics has not prevented the majority of players from concluding they may be looking at one of the best computer roleplaying games ever written. The smartest ones intuit it, they don't need a press rep to give them a bag of promotional goodies for them to guess it."
I will probably pick that game up, yes. Because salty nerds turned gamedevs are the best gamedevs.
Yeah, it sounds good to me. I also happen to like obtuse game mechanics and figuring everything out myself.
Every couple of years I get a hankering to play through the Eye of the Beholder Series, and I make it through the first one and second one without too much fuss (except for I think the 3rd floor on 2 where the spiders are... poison... ugh) anyways, so I get my saved game ready after 2 and jump into Eye 3 Assault on Myth Drannor and its PAIN. When I was younger I had just assumed my computer was too slow and that was why it played like hot garbage... but no it plays just as a bad as it ever did. So poorly optimized, stuttering and such. That is where my journey ends, I could press through when I was in my teens but cant do it anymore, which sucks cause I really liked the Weretiger guy.
(and as i posted that I thought.. hey, surely some fan has made a patch or tweaks to make it not run like garbage... and sure enough.
FUCK I guess I know what series I'll be running through again. )
Does any still living human actually know what Luck does in Elminage, or is it all folklore?
There's items you can get later on that show you the dice rolls the game makes when you do anything. IIRC Luck gives you a better chance to crit, a slightly higher chance of your stats going up, affects thief skills, and gives you a better chance of trigger (or avoiding) status attacks.
I keep wanting to dive into Class of Heroes 2g, but then I remember the localizers basically force-included a romhack (they "rebalanced" some things and outright nerfed others) and I back out. Pity.
I can't believe Class of Heroes 3 is done but on ice.
I really wanted to play it, and now I don't have any systems it would/could come out on. In my dreams it get's ported to Switch and becomes the first gridder for that system.
I can't believe Class of Heroes 3 is done but on ice.
I really wanted to play it, and now I don't have any systems it would/could come out on. In my dreams it get's ported to Switch and becomes the first gridder for that system.
Well, it's a PSP title and, uh, there are *options*. Er, I mean... Vita can run it. He's also talking about getting the PS3 version which has a built in expansion. (But, knowing him, he'd try to backport that silly "PSP as WiiU controller" thing he did for 2g.)
I can't imagine it ever gets ported to Switch unless the original company does it. He could do it for Steam - there are some very good middleware packages for that - but he didn't like the idea when I suggested it.
Wizardry's legacy continued in Japan after the parent company ended, with titles such as Wizardry Gaiden, Wizardry Empire, Wizardry XTH, and Wizardry Renaissance being developed after the original games were released and generally keeping the same tropes, themes, and mechanics. Wizardry XTH spawned a direct sequel, Wizardry XTH 2, which was used as the basis for and shared code with Class of Heroes, a game that heavily used Wizardry mechanics but replaced the Gothic themes with an Anime High School aesthetic. Class of Heroes would go on to spawn several sequels and spinoffs itself.
Following the shutdown of Michaelsoft, the director of Wizardry XTH, Motoya Ataka, took a group of programmers he called "Team Muramasa" that had worked on Empire and created XTH and went on to found Experience, creating a series of PC games with Wizardry's mechanics set in the modern day called Generation Xth. These would later be ported to the Playstation Vita, their ports localized as Operation Abyss and Operation Babel. Experience would go on to create several other DRPGs using Wizardry's mechanics as a starting point, including Students of the Round, Stranger of Sword City, and Demon Gaze.
Starfish, the development team behind Wizardry Empire, would later go on to create Elminage, a series of DRPGs that retained the original Gothic aesthetic of the western Wizardry games. Elminage was notable for using the expanded "kemonojin" races from Wizardry Asterisk, also by Starfish, as well as the summoner class from Wizardry: Summoner -- these included "Were-Beast," "Dragonnewt," "Fairy," and "Devilkin" as well as expanded classes such as "Brawler" (a hand to hand melee specialist), "Alchemist" (a combination crafting class and spellcaster), and "Summoner" (a spellcasting class that can tame and summon monsters from the dungeon). These "expanded" Japanese Wizardry mechanics would be reused in future Elminage games as well as notably Class of Heroes.
Meanwhile, in the Fanservice dimension, Moero Chronicle came out, a softcore porn (?) Gridder. I'm biting the bullet and will give updates.
KiTA on
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IanatorGaze upon my works, ye mightyand facepalm.Registered Userregular
Meanwhile, in the Fanservice dimension, Moero Chronicle came out, a softcore porn (?) Gridder. I'm biting the bullet and will give updates.
Please do. I'd like to see if this is something I can legitimately refer people to now instead of waiting for Mary Skelter (which I should also do some more research on).
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg) Backlog Challenge List
"If SP is under 30%, Cute Butt increases base ATK by 25%."
Game is a basic gridder. Some interesting bits.
Main character can't fight. When his turn comes up in combat (always first) he can store desire and release desire. The more energy he stores the bigger chance he'll have to er, need to rest for a bit. When he releases energy it gives the girl he releases a huge boost. Girls can do the standard attack and aura (magic), as well as defend and "charm" which increases desire a lot -- basically passing a turn to buff the MC.
There are two types of enemies. First is "H Mons" which are basically cannon fodder. They're all based on perversion -- the first is an anthropomorphic mouse(?) with 6 breasts. Another is a UFO made out of breasts with an alien for breasts for eyes inside. (In short, no, not sure this can be recommended to normies.) One interesting thing is these cannon fodder can join you and you can equip one as a Pet, they give an additional passive skill.
The bosses and FOEs (the game uses a minor version of FOEs from EO) are "Monster Musume" -- monster girls. So far they're all Japanese Style furries and Japanese Youkai -- humans with animal ears and tail mostly. First one is based on Fenrir, next is a catgirl, next is a puppygirl, and the one I just got is a... goblin? These fights have destructible points (clothes) that cause a perversion meter to grow, once it hit 100% you can then start to ... massage the girls into breaking the magic curse on them. There's 3 points on each girl and 4 ways to... massage. Since it was touchscreen the mouse is probably best way to do this (360 controller isn't really built for it).
If you do it right (basically cause a chain reaction) then you get into some bonus round where the girls clothes vanish, they're censored via hearts, and you can go spastic with the controller to build up meter. If you max out the meter, you get the girl as a party member. If not, it's like FOEs, they respawn after a long while.
Every time you hit an elemental weakness in combat, you gain an Aura combo point, the more combo points you get the better your rewards at the end of combat.
There's a mascot, a pink seal, that keeps turning into Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. He's obsessed with panties.
The girls have skills, basic skill gain system (fights cause the bar to fill up). Nothing impressive there, but the game has a class system... which is based around what panties the girls are wearing. Haven't figured out how to change their underwear yet. They come from odd places -- I've got one for some Slime-Girl that an enemy dropped but who isn't in my party yet. There's different art based on hat panties (costume) they're wearing, I think. Each girl -- and this changes base don the costume I think -- has two traits, like "Cute butt" up there, which synergize with each other and cause passive effects.
So, you have girls (party of ... 5? out of a cast of 50+) each with a costume, simplistic skilltree, passive, and pet. So there's some decent customization here.
I'm not sold on it, although the absurdity of the tit-UFO almost pushed me away. So far everything's been pretty simple but not bad. Cute art though, but if I cared I'd just go hit up Pixiv or something.
Edit: Unlocked Costume change. They're... underwear. At least with the first char, your options are fully clothed or 3 different styles of underwear (and nothing else). Each affects stats differently. Amusingly, the pink underwear is the tank set.
Crafting... Um. You take "Material Panties" and give them to a girl to have them combine them with one of the pet summons to create gear. Thongs create helmets, Tie-sides make rings, Tanga create necklaces, and Trousers create consumables. "Strawberry Pattern" are special and create a "building material" no idea what that is. (Edit: They're items for upgrading the bedrooms of each of the girls.) Each girl has a rare skill or somesuch that they can impart to items.
Edit2: Ran into the first fight I had to flee from. After the first boss there was a FOE, I attacked her and a girl in a killer bee costume carrying a jug of honey with an entourage of men wearing vertical (but not horizontal, because these are pallet swaps) striped panties on their heads quickly caused me to flee for my life.
So new Etrian Odyssey next month. I was kinda hoping to hear it was also going to be released/ported for the switch so I could play it on my TV...but that doesn't appear to be happening. I've enjoyed the other ones so i'll be picking that one up for sure. Honestly though I haven't heard much about this one's release, so I'm skeptical of quality. But I'm sure it'll be fun.
By the way, to ensure you don't accidentally buy Grimoire but you DO get your enjoyment from its creation, make sure to do some more reading up on the guy who made it.
Anyway, if that's all it was, he'd just be another vapourware guy. BUT THERE'S MORE! See, Cleve used to go on Usenet back in the day and regale us with stories about the coming race wars in America, how he once defeated an entire gang of Mexican thugs in the L.A. riots, and how he's actually descended from Neanderthals and hence is like an ubermench to us puny Homo Sapiens. He would tell us tales of his superior bone density, which once allowed him to not only get hit by a car and survive but the car's metal bent around him because he's just that strong, yo. Oh, and how musketballs used to be the size of basketballs and if you got hit with one you'd just explode into red mist. Not him, though, because he's a Neanderthal.
All the while, he'd be talking up Grimoire, announcing it was "95%" completed and would be the greatest game of all-time. Sometime around then, he apparently packed his family up to Australia because he was 100% there was a coming nuclear war, built a fallout shelter, and started selling a computer system designed to be used by other wingnuts with fallout shelters. He has a blog called Vault Co which is technically work safe, but neither brain nor eyeball safe.
Yo, I bought Grimoire...I have it in my library right now with a SOUND 5 minutes of play time. I made the purchase not to support Cleave. But to remind myself that there are some truly terrible things in this world. And I should be happy with mediocre to standard gameplay of other developers...
I really liked the first Demon Gaze, but Demon Gaze 2 doesn't seem as appealing.
New, interesting feature that's kind of annoying is alignments. You pick one of three alignments at the start of the game, and an alignment consists of basically eight? permanent skills for the main character and three permanent skills for each of the other playable characters.
That's in addition to the basic skills they'll always have, and the five slots for equippable skills. So that one choice changes a decent chunk of the learnable permanent skills for every playable character in the game.
So one alignment can be better for some characters, and worse for others, or maybe encourage using a character in a different way, and some characters don't necessarily change much.
There's some flexibility, three of the alignment-skills for each character, including main character, actually let you pick one of two to three options.
There's still a few ways for them to go to waste. The obvious one is you get skills that just doesn't help with what you're going for. The other is you get a weaker version of a skill that you can equip to one of the five customisable slots.
The difference is the biggest for the main character, who can range from a huge stack of passive protections with one option, to a large pile of attack-skills that make eachother obsolete with another option.
The one with the passive protections can then just take the strongest one of those attacks, and equip it in one of the five custom-slots.
One character naturally learns all of the item-skills, so can just machinegun five boosted wand-uses every turn.
Also all of the good buff-spells, because why not.
Is there a good gridder on mobile?
I don't need a 100hr+ marathon like Etrian Odyssey, but I wouldn't mind a game that's a bit meatier than the average mobage rpg-lite.
On that same note, are there any gridders that are particularly short, with the intention of it being replayed repeatedly?
It's entirely valid to replay Etrian Odyssey games repeatedly with different class combinations, but I just don't have the stomach for the whole thing from start to finish. I'm wondering if there's like a 10-20 hour long gridder that wants you to beat the game and try it again, and isn't a roguelike.
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I think there may've been a patch to make bad guys less trivial on Normal yesterday, as well. Still fairly simple to stay upright if you're rolling with a Force Psyker or Hacker, it looks like.
Only fight I lost during the whole thing was against the boss of the lvl 18 story mission, also died to a magma trap when I got frustrated trying to find an off switch and tried what happens if you just walk through it.
Despite the combat being too easy, the writing and exploring the locations was really fun and the interface works well. Was surprised to see how many split paths the main plot takes, I guess when you don't need voice acting or fancy cutscenes it's a lot easier to create a lot of content. I backed both this and Darkest Dungeon at the same time and while I think DD is more unique and impressive this was easier to enjoy, certainly far more relaxing experience. Might still dabble a bit with the game, only tried half the classes so far and there's NG+ and so on. Still, getting to a definite end of the main plot was nice and I liked the ending and getting to read what the impact of my decisions was.
Ever since I got Voidstorm, Void Psyker has put out literally too much threat to tank for unless I treat this as an MMO and my Force Psyker deliberately builds a ton of threat before I go live on damage. Smuggler's only slightly behind on raw output but it's a lot slower to build and still relies mostly on the Shoot First procs for spikes.
I suspect I'm getting closer to the end of the story, but I gotta say I'm really enjoying this game.
Tanking seems far worse than using crowd control, my Smuggler took care of most enemies with the trap tree. Trap Card alone is enough to prevent most trash mobs on firing at you. With the bigger bosses I could have had my Soldier tank them with Juggernaut that doesn't care about threat but they died so fast that never was an issue. They've nerfed some of the more extreme Hacker things already but last I checked they haven't touched Void Psyker much. I read about some guy who never did any side missions and fought the NG+ lvl 60 end boss with lvl 38 heroes on the hardest difficulty or something like that, so there has definitely been some balance issues. Might not be doable any more but the game could still use a few balancing patches for sure.
Well, in this case when I say "Tanking," I really mean "not constantly getting targeted by every single thing after a Voidstorm or a high-energy Torrent." Void Psyker actually seemed to get buffed to not have its day entirely ruined by shields at the low end; I couldn't hit Bolts through shields and they didn't lower them any, and now they do.
Overloads + Purification Prism gets exciting if your team gets hit by any of the debuffs Voids can put out, damage-wise, as well.
I'm pretty sure the Smuggler's hide-behind-someone move currently does nothing at all, which is another knock on the tanking front. The entire plan was for her to hide behind my Engineer!
Wish Stranger of Sword City PC got the expansion, but Experience is staying mum about that -- apparently the PC version had a patch that was based on feedback from the JP players which makes it nontrivial to port the expansion stuff over to it. (And NISA might not want to if it didn't sell well.)
Apparently Elminage is getting fan translations of the games we didn't get. And surprise, E1 (Original) is coming out for the 3DS tomorrow.
Class of Heroes 3 is apparently done, but they took too long and the UMD factory in JP has shut down for good, so they can't do a physical. They're debating switching from PSP to PS3. Not only that, if I understand it right, the PSP store has been shut down, so digital won't work either.
...Kinda wish they had released this one already...
Other than that, Etrian Odyssey 5 is coming soonish, and they just announced Persona Q2.
What's everyone else playing?
Starcrawlers!!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I need to give Fall of the Dungeon Guardians a serious shot sometime.
EO5, October 17th
"A lack of understanding of the user interface and game mechanics has not prevented the majority of players from concluding they may be looking at one of the best computer roleplaying games ever written. The smartest ones intuit it, they don't need a press rep to give them a bag of promotional goodies for them to guess it."
I will probably pick that game up, yes. Because salty nerds turned gamedevs are the best gamedevs.
Excuse you, it's on a 10% off sale right now. So, it's only $36.
No joke that looks pretty sweet.
Yeah, it sounds good to me. I also happen to like obtuse game mechanics and figuring everything out myself.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Edit: add in some more crazy and some racism. Huh.
(and as i posted that I thought.. hey, surely some fan has made a patch or tweaks to make it not run like garbage... and sure enough.
FUCK I guess I know what series I'll be running through again. )
There's items you can get later on that show you the dice rolls the game makes when you do anything. IIRC Luck gives you a better chance to crit, a slightly higher chance of your stats going up, affects thief skills, and gives you a better chance of trigger (or avoiding) status attacks.
I really wanted to play it, and now I don't have any systems it would/could come out on. In my dreams it get's ported to Switch and becomes the first gridder for that system.
Well, it's a PSP title and, uh, there are *options*. Er, I mean... Vita can run it. He's also talking about getting the PS3 version which has a built in expansion. (But, knowing him, he'd try to backport that silly "PSP as WiiU controller" thing he did for 2g.)
I can't imagine it ever gets ported to Switch unless the original company does it. He could do it for Steam - there are some very good middleware packages for that - but he didn't like the idea when I suggested it.
I did some updates for Wizardry's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry#Influence_on_subsequent_games
Wizardry's legacy continued in Japan after the parent company ended, with titles such as Wizardry Gaiden, Wizardry Empire, Wizardry XTH, and Wizardry Renaissance being developed after the original games were released and generally keeping the same tropes, themes, and mechanics. Wizardry XTH spawned a direct sequel, Wizardry XTH 2, which was used as the basis for and shared code with Class of Heroes, a game that heavily used Wizardry mechanics but replaced the Gothic themes with an Anime High School aesthetic. Class of Heroes would go on to spawn several sequels and spinoffs itself.
Following the shutdown of Michaelsoft, the director of Wizardry XTH, Motoya Ataka, took a group of programmers he called "Team Muramasa" that had worked on Empire and created XTH and went on to found Experience, creating a series of PC games with Wizardry's mechanics set in the modern day called Generation Xth. These would later be ported to the Playstation Vita, their ports localized as Operation Abyss and Operation Babel. Experience would go on to create several other DRPGs using Wizardry's mechanics as a starting point, including Students of the Round, Stranger of Sword City, and Demon Gaze.
Starfish, the development team behind Wizardry Empire, would later go on to create Elminage, a series of DRPGs that retained the original Gothic aesthetic of the western Wizardry games. Elminage was notable for using the expanded "kemonojin" races from Wizardry Asterisk, also by Starfish, as well as the summoner class from Wizardry: Summoner -- these included "Were-Beast," "Dragonnewt," "Fairy," and "Devilkin" as well as expanded classes such as "Brawler" (a hand to hand melee specialist), "Alchemist" (a combination crafting class and spellcaster), and "Summoner" (a spellcasting class that can tame and summon monsters from the dungeon). These "expanded" Japanese Wizardry mechanics would be reused in future Elminage games as well as notably Class of Heroes.
Meanwhile, in the Fanservice dimension, Moero Chronicle came out, a softcore porn (?) Gridder. I'm biting the bullet and will give updates.
Please do. I'd like to see if this is something I can legitimately refer people to now instead of waiting for Mary Skelter (which I should also do some more research on).
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
"If SP is under 30%, Cute Butt increases base ATK by 25%."
Game is a basic gridder. Some interesting bits.
Main character can't fight. When his turn comes up in combat (always first) he can store desire and release desire. The more energy he stores the bigger chance he'll have to er, need to rest for a bit. When he releases energy it gives the girl he releases a huge boost. Girls can do the standard attack and aura (magic), as well as defend and "charm" which increases desire a lot -- basically passing a turn to buff the MC.
There are two types of enemies. First is "H Mons" which are basically cannon fodder. They're all based on perversion -- the first is an anthropomorphic mouse(?) with 6 breasts. Another is a UFO made out of breasts with an alien for breasts for eyes inside. (In short, no, not sure this can be recommended to normies.) One interesting thing is these cannon fodder can join you and you can equip one as a Pet, they give an additional passive skill.
The bosses and FOEs (the game uses a minor version of FOEs from EO) are "Monster Musume" -- monster girls. So far they're all Japanese Style furries and Japanese Youkai -- humans with animal ears and tail mostly. First one is based on Fenrir, next is a catgirl, next is a puppygirl, and the one I just got is a... goblin? These fights have destructible points (clothes) that cause a perversion meter to grow, once it hit 100% you can then start to ... massage the girls into breaking the magic curse on them. There's 3 points on each girl and 4 ways to... massage. Since it was touchscreen the mouse is probably best way to do this (360 controller isn't really built for it).
If you do it right (basically cause a chain reaction) then you get into some bonus round where the girls clothes vanish, they're censored via hearts, and you can go spastic with the controller to build up meter. If you max out the meter, you get the girl as a party member. If not, it's like FOEs, they respawn after a long while.
Every time you hit an elemental weakness in combat, you gain an Aura combo point, the more combo points you get the better your rewards at the end of combat.
There's a mascot, a pink seal, that keeps turning into Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. He's obsessed with panties.
The girls have skills, basic skill gain system (fights cause the bar to fill up). Nothing impressive there, but the game has a class system... which is based around what panties the girls are wearing. Haven't figured out how to change their underwear yet. They come from odd places -- I've got one for some Slime-Girl that an enemy dropped but who isn't in my party yet. There's different art based on hat panties (costume) they're wearing, I think. Each girl -- and this changes base don the costume I think -- has two traits, like "Cute butt" up there, which synergize with each other and cause passive effects.
So, you have girls (party of ... 5? out of a cast of 50+) each with a costume, simplistic skilltree, passive, and pet. So there's some decent customization here.
I'm not sold on it, although the absurdity of the tit-UFO almost pushed me away. So far everything's been pretty simple but not bad. Cute art though, but if I cared I'd just go hit up Pixiv or something.
Edit: Unlocked Costume change. They're... underwear. At least with the first char, your options are fully clothed or 3 different styles of underwear (and nothing else). Each affects stats differently. Amusingly, the pink underwear is the tank set.
Crafting... Um. You take "Material Panties" and give them to a girl to have them combine them with one of the pet summons to create gear. Thongs create helmets, Tie-sides make rings, Tanga create necklaces, and Trousers create consumables. "Strawberry Pattern" are special and create a "building material" no idea what that is. (Edit: They're items for upgrading the bedrooms of each of the girls.) Each girl has a rare skill or somesuch that they can impart to items.
Edit2: Ran into the first fight I had to flee from. After the first boss there was a FOE, I attacked her and a girl in a killer bee costume carrying a jug of honey with an entourage of men wearing vertical (but not horizontal, because these are pallet swaps) striped panties on their heads quickly caused me to flee for my life.
So, yeah.
Edit3: Aaand game just froze.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/6rkhf4/can_someone_give_me_a_history_of_grimoire_winged/
http://www.siliconera.com/2017/09/07/lost-child-heading-west-2018/
At face value the trailer does't really indicate what the hell it is, but gameplay videos indicate it's a Wizardry style dungeon diver.
New, interesting feature that's kind of annoying is alignments. You pick one of three alignments at the start of the game, and an alignment consists of basically eight? permanent skills for the main character and three permanent skills for each of the other playable characters.
That's in addition to the basic skills they'll always have, and the five slots for equippable skills. So that one choice changes a decent chunk of the learnable permanent skills for every playable character in the game.
So one alignment can be better for some characters, and worse for others, or maybe encourage using a character in a different way, and some characters don't necessarily change much.
There's some flexibility, three of the alignment-skills for each character, including main character, actually let you pick one of two to three options.
There's still a few ways for them to go to waste. The obvious one is you get skills that just doesn't help with what you're going for. The other is you get a weaker version of a skill that you can equip to one of the five customisable slots.
The difference is the biggest for the main character, who can range from a huge stack of passive protections with one option, to a large pile of attack-skills that make eachother obsolete with another option.
The one with the passive protections can then just take the strongest one of those attacks, and equip it in one of the five custom-slots.
Also all of the good buff-spells, because why not.
Seems odd they never patched the money issue on PS4, but I can't say I mind having all the monies.
I don't need a 100hr+ marathon like Etrian Odyssey, but I wouldn't mind a game that's a bit meatier than the average mobage rpg-lite.
On that same note, are there any gridders that are particularly short, with the intention of it being replayed repeatedly?
It's entirely valid to replay Etrian Odyssey games repeatedly with different class combinations, but I just don't have the stomach for the whole thing from start to finish. I'm wondering if there's like a 10-20 hour long gridder that wants you to beat the game and try it again, and isn't a roguelike.